Jesco Puluj shares how confronting jealousy, grief, and guilt made him a better man.
Earlier this year I conducted a social experiment that challenged me more than I could have ever imagined: I decided to share a room and a bed with my ex-girlfriend only a month after she had broken up with me and while I was still in love with her.
What was particularly interesting about the experiment was that we did not even live in the same house while we were still together. Moving into the same room was a conscious decision from both of us to challenge ourselves and grow along the way.
I am a fairly well balanced guy and had never experienced much emotional turmoil. I saw this as a chance to get in touch with my emotions – as cheesy as it sounds. Furthermore, I imagined it to be so confronting that it would shorten the grief period and help me to move on quicker.
What followed was the craziest month of my life. I was indeed confronted with some of the darker emotions that life has to offer: anger, rage, jealousy, envy, grief and shame. Along the way I became the main character of my very own soap opera: her new boyfriend moved also into the house and ended up in the room next to us, I listened to both their stories as they broke up every couple of days and I eventually suffered from her physically attacking me.
The funny thing is, I don’t regret anything that happened. In fact, I learned so much that I want to share it here with you.
These are my top 10 lessons learnt from sharing a room with my ex-girlfriend.
1. Actions arising from emotional turmoil are often weak, but not the emotions themselves
Emotions come and go like waves and we have little control over them, they appear and vanish in any given moment. That means that it is no use to judge and resent unpleasant emotions, they are simply a part of us. Attaching a value to them often serves no useful purpose. With jealousy for example, if you are jealous you are not weak – you are alive. Jealousy is energy shooting through your body and it is up to you what to do with it. You can see it as a strong indicator how much you like somebody and you can leave it at that. Alternatively, you have the choice to act on your dark emotions in a destructive way. Spying on your partner when you are jealous, insulting your friends when you are angry at them, or shutting down when you are envious at their successes.
Whatever disconnection occurs in relationships, don’t blame the emotions but see the cause in the actions you choose to take.
I noticed that when I felt a lot of grief I accused my ex of torturing me, of being unfair. However, it was not the frustration itself that was causing disconnection, but the blame I put on her, which brings me to my next point.
2. The moment you blame or judge you disconnect
Oscar Wilde once said: “People are rather right than happy”. Blaming others is such an ordinary part of human interaction that we rarely reflect what it says about ourselves and what it does to our connections. The moment we blame we put our judging finger on them and push ourselves into a superior position. We think that we are just telling them that we don’t like their behavior but that’s rarely what we actually say. “I don’t like what you did” would bring the message across just fine but instead we say things like: “You can be really annoying” or “You are being childish”.
3. When in doubt between yes and no, yes is more likely to be the right answer.
It was actually my ex who proposed to move into my room. My first reaction was panic. I imagined how horrible I would feel and how I would be tormented by my own insecurities. And yet there was doubt that I couldn’t silence. I was intrigued and kept thinking about it for days. I ended up saying yes, because otherwise I would have faced my regret of not having tried.
In the end I did feel horrible at times and I was indeed tormented by my own securities but I love how much stronger and self-aware it made me, so it did turn out to be the right answer.
4. The first time you want to give up, it is fear speaking and not reason.
It took only a week of living with her until I was ready to give up. One day she woke me up at 6am, blow drying her hair in the middle of the room. My body filled with anger. I started fantasizing about hitting her. This scared me so much that I wanted to end the experiment, fearing it would escalate. Fortunately, my friends calmed me down and encouraged me to not give up. In the days that followed we got along really well and I would have felt silly to give up that early.
I compared myself to a boxer who gets hit and falls to the ground, thinking that it is over, while the cheers of the crowd make him get up and win the fight.
5. Don’t be afraid to be the one who loves the most
I read this quote in an article about how to improve your relationships and it helped me a lot during the experiment. Throughout the 30 days she yelled and cursed a lot at me, and I often found myself in a position where I blamed, judged and resented her, I just couldn’t help it. It was in these moments where I ran the mantra through my head: “Don’t be afraid to be the one that loves the most”. There is something magical about that line, give it a try. It stopped me treating her as she was treating me. Furthermore, I am sure she applied something similar when my dark side came out and I needed her to give me the strength to become self-aware again.
6. Embrace your urge to cry and don’t allow people to cheer you up
Crying has a bad image. Crying babies and kids are considered annoying and crying adults make us feel uncomfortable as we are unsure how we can help. However, we rarely consider the possibility that crying is beneficial. It is sadness that we tend to avoid, but crying itself releases the sadness.
I learned this the hard way during the 30 days as I got plenty of opportunities to cry. Most interesting was that when I cried in front of people, I hated it when they tried to cheer me up or make me look at the situation in a positive light. I was thinking “I am doing great work releasing my sadness, please don’t try to make me stop.”
As it is hard to say this while crying, consider it next time when you offer somebody your shoulder to cry on.
7. There is a lot of value in seeing life as an infinite game.
Life has so many hardships to offer that I find it very useful to look at life as an infinite game. This means that no matter how low you fall you have not lost. As an infinite player all you need to do is to keep playing, to take the next step and embrace the challenge of the moment as an opportunity to become a better player. This sounds a bit strange at first but is a great chance to stay positive when life slaps you in the face.
Let me explain it using the ordeal I went through as an example; the moment my girlfriend broke up with me I felt like I had lost because I looked at the finite game called relationship instead of the infinite game called life. Then she offered to move in with me and I started to look at the bigger picture. I saw an opportunity to gain more out of this situation then I would have if the relationship continued. I said yes to her offer and kept the game alive.
8. The more you feel the grief, the quicker it goes away
Break ups can lead to months of grief, despair, and isolation. The grief I felt in the weeks after was the most intense emotion I had ever felt. As much as I wanted to experience it, I also wanted to move on. The experiment was the ultimate confrontation with my grief. I shared a bed with the woman who had gotten over me, while I witnessed her starting a relationship with the man who lived in the room next to us. As much as it hurt, a few weeks into the experiment I did not feel the grief anymore, all I was left with was the challenge of accepting that it was over.
9. You are only a victim if you think you are
If something terrible happens to you than that is a fact you cannot change. What you can do is choose whether you call yourself a victim or not. I am talking about victim as in “victim of the unfairness of life”. Yes, life is unfair, just be aware: The moment you call yourself a victim you give up on taking responsibility for your life and you are handing it over to destiny.
10. Be wary of promises and announcements – nobody can see the future
Over the course of our relationship she broke up with me many times, only to take it back hours later. Furthermore, while living together she would say the following things to me: “I will never talk to you again”, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore”, “I will move out of the house”, “I don’t like you anymore”. I believed her every time but over and over and I experienced them as false announcements that merely reflected how she was feeling in that moment.
Being confronted with this pattern so often has now made me a lot more sensitive to promises and announcements. Emotions change and so do desires and opinions. So the next time somebody tells you: “I will most certainly help you” or “It is over between us” be aware that is merely a prediction and not a truth. The truth lies only in the present and in the past.
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Photo: Ben Seidelman/Flickr
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“I eventually suffered from her physically attacking me.”
Did you call the police about the Domestic abuse? Did she get professional help for her issues? Or was it left for the next victim to deal with?
Interesting story. I’m glad I’m reading about it here, and not under the headline “Break-up experiment leads to murder/suicide”. Good luck with your film.